The New York State Catholic Conference, which represents the bishops of New York in public policy matters, sent a letter to the state’s congressional delegation urging them “to reject taxpayer funding of abortion, and to oppose appropriations bills that do not include the long-standing, bipartisan Hyde Amendment and related pro-life policies.”
When the Supreme Court decided May 17 to take up a challenge to a Mississippi abortion law, it brought abortion back to the front burner months before the court will hear oral arguments about it this fall.
The U.S. Supreme Court said in a May 17 order that it will hear oral arguments during its next term on a 2018 Mississippi abortion law banning most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Read Archbishop Cordileone’s “Before I Formed You In The Womb I Knew You”
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco has become the latest American bishop to advocate barring Catholic public figures who support abortion rights from communion, as the debate on the topic continues to grow since President Joe Biden, the country’s second Catholic president and a pro-choice Democrat, took office.
The decision by the acting commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to suspend enforcement of the agency’s in-person prescribing requirement for the abortion drug endangers women’s health and possibly their lives, pro-life leaders said.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities has launched a campaign urging Catholics to write letters to pharmaceutical companies urging them to stop the use of abortion-derived cell lines in the development and testing of vaccines.
If the Equal Rights Amendment were to become part of the U.S. Constitution, its opponents say, it will actually harm women’s interests and invalidate pro-life policies, such as the federal Hyde Amendment and all state restrictions on tax-funded abortions.
Hours after the Biden administration’s COVID-19 relief plan passed Wednesday, several U.S. Bishops Conference chairmen called it “unconscionable” that the bill didn’t include protections against taxpayer funding of abortion.
If it becomes law, the American Rescue Plan Act would pit the great need Americans have for economic relief in this pandemic against those who insist the bill must include abortion funding, said the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the chairmen of seven USCCB committees.
